As we're all aware, the internet was invented in the 1950's to facilitate arguing amongst humans who have never met and, considering what usually gets said, probably never should. The topics for discussion are incredibly varied, ranging from which of the Sugar Babes can actually hold a note to which is the best science fiction spaceship.

Format War doesn't bother itself with these trivialities of course (and the best spaceship is the TARDIS; it can drag an entire planet through space at speed and arrive at the finishing line of a race twenty minutes before the starting pistol) and instead worries about the real issues affecting real people - for example, does the Commodore 64 have better games than the Sinclair Spectrum or was the Nintendo SuperNES more powerful than the Sega Megadrive? Considering how many flamewars questions such as these are responsible for, they're obviously burning questions.

There are of course a myriad of websites on the internet dedicated to individual computers or consoles, as well as sites like Format War's sister Oldschool Gaming that cover a range of platforms, but these kinds of comparative discussion are usually frowned upon by forum administrators due to their heated nature. But some people actively enjoy these discussions; when the topic turns to which games are superior for a platform, a list of cracking titles that might not have otherwise been mentioned usually gets posted and, for the programmers, taking part the technical discussions are potential goldmines of information and ideas. So Format War was thrown together from spare parts to act as a battleground for these discussions, somewhere where the arguing won't get in the way or upset the admins - as has been noted elsewhere, this might be the stupidest idea I've ever had!

Editor's note: this article is still under construction!